Page 106 - The Way to the Top

Gary HIRSHBERG

President and CEO of Stonyfield Farm, Inc.

Shortly after the crash of 1987, my then little and struggling yogurt
company took a severe nosedive. A contract packer had gone bankrupt and
we were left with all the bills but none of the manufacturing capacity. So

we moved all of the production back to our little hilltop farm, back to our
long-since-outgrown prototype yogurt “plant,” dusted off the cobwebs, and
proceeded to meet orders, albeit unprofitably for the next fifteen months.
This location had about eleven months of winter and one month of poor

sledding, so our employees were busier plowing, shoveling, and otherwise
plugging leaks than making yogurt. As a consequence, I went into a severe
and pitched search for funds. Every week that passed would be a week
when I had yet another $8,500 payroll to meet and $25,000 in milk, fruit,

and packaging to purchase. Ultimately, we lost about $20,000 per week,
looking like a pretty ugly duckling when it came to impressing the
investors.

I met dozens of venture capitalists in this era and all of them left me
pretty disheartened. Many saw through the chaos and recognized a

potentially valuable brand, but all tried to steal us blind. During one
especially dark period, a friend sent me an L.L. Bean walking stick that
contained a flashlight and a compass neatly screwed inside. Attached was

a note that I immediately tacked on my wall and have looked at every day
of the sixteen years that have elapsed since. His note read: “Dear Gary,
Use this to walk tall, find your way out of the wilderness, and pierce the
darkness of despair.”

Today, as I sit at the helm of the nation’s third largest and fastest

growing yogurt company, I now know that determination is probably the
most undervalued and underappreciated prerequisite to success, and this